Mr. Habito, currently Chief of Party of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) Trade-Related Assistance for Development (TRADE) project, said some key elements of the game plan are already being implemented just as “AEC is already here” as indicated by the elimination of tariffs on 99.6% of products traded within the region.
Mr. Habito cited the clustering and shared services facilities program of the DTI, conduct of seminars nationwide on Doing Business in Free Trade Areas, drawing up of industry road maps by the Board of Investments and inclusive finance efforts by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
He also noted that the government is set to sign in November the multilateral agreement in air services to provide open skies in major ports of entry in the country.
He noted, however, that Congress has yet to approve the proposed fair competition law.
“This is very important. This is a law that’s been there for 20 years now. I was still NEDA (National Economic and Development Authority) secretary when this was first proposed in Congress. It was always thwarted by vested interests,” Mr. Habito said in his presentation during the Visayas Area Business Conference here Friday.
TRADE is helping DTI -- which chairs the Committee for ASEAN Economic Community (CAEC) under the Philippine Council for Regional Cooperation -- craft the AEC game plan.
The AEC aims to establish a single market and production base with free movement of goods, services and investments across the 10 ASEAN member countries by end-2015.
“It’s not just trade liberalization. It’s also about a lot of policy commitments and economic reforms that the 10 ASEAN member countries promised to undertake in order to move towards integration,” Mr. Habito noted.
The Philippines, for its part, has 439 policy commitments such as the adoption of open skies, trade facilitation, passage of a competition law, and other institutional policies, he said. About 87% has been complied with.
“We only have about 13% of our policy commitments left to be done by next year. That implies that we’re almost already there,” he said.
Among the 10 ASEAN members, he said the ASEAN Secretariat’s latest scorecard showed a compliance rate of 84%-89%.
Mr. Habito assured businesses that there won’t be a “tsunami” of ASEAN products into the Philippines by 2016 since 99.6% of products have been traded at zero tariffs among the ASEAN-6 members Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Thailand since January 1, 2010.
“This means that we are all almost there, and AEC is not just coming in 2015 but is mostly already here.”
The proposed AEC Game Plan consists of four broad strategies or the 4Cs -- Compliance, Competitiveness, Communication and Collaboration. -- Marites S. Villamor
source: Businessworld
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